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Well, the fabulous custome pics are by the girls from Chonastock. Always loved the look of the Andorian chick.

__________________Bashir: »Out of all the stories you told me, which ones were true and which ones weren't?«Garak: »My dear doctor, they're all true.«Bashir: »Even the lies?«Garak: »Especially the lies.«

It's nice, but nope, ethically (and legally I might add (been there, done that in regard to my art trying to be hijacked), as all art is automatically protected under an artist's intellectual property rights), even if credited, you cannot ever use another artist's work without their express permission to do so. If permission is granted, it is then up to said artist if they would like credit to be given to them or not.

I didn't have your permission to cut it out, remove all traces of the original context, flip it, rotate it, scale it to tiny, nor essentially make it utterly unrecognizable.

This being the case, do you insist that I remove the shuttle from the picture?

I can tell you that I had no malice aforethought. It was suggested that I insert a shuttlecraft, so I Googled for images. Yours came up, and happened to be the right angle to look like the shuttle was going away from the scene. The lighting was reasonable for the existing light angle, which was my primary concern.

Furthermore, intellectual property arguments aside, I'm curious how someone can be forced to stop using artwork that was publicly published on the Web?

Seriously, the bottom line is that when you publish something publicly to millions of individuals, there is absolutely no way to stop those individuals from re-using your art. It's simply a given of the medium that others may well do what I did.

I'm sorry, but it's true. No one can stop me from doing it, period. You might want to stop me, but you can't. The reality of what's called "intellectual property" completely falls apart when anyone can download anything from anywhere.

Furthermore, to argue that I shouldn't be allowed to do it is to argue in favor of a 100% police state. After all, 24x7x365 monitoring and enforcement is the only way to make sure I don't whip out the Gimp and start amusing myself late at night ...

The only way to keep people from not re-using your art, purely on a practical level, is quite simple: never, ever publish it. Don't let anyone ever see it. Who knows if they might, say, sketch it from memory -- thereby stealing your art?

Also, from the philosophical perspective, I'm unclear about something: aside from doing it digitally, how is what I've done here any different than making a collage?

Are you suggesting that students are stealing art whenever they do a collage for school?

Or is the objection that considerably more people will see my digital collage than might see it if I were a 4th-grader? Again, keeping in mind that I did it as a lark in my free time and am in no way charging anyone to see it.

Dakota Smith

__________________"No human being has the right — under any circumstances — to initiate force against another human being, nor to threaten or delegate its initiation."

Well, the fabulous custome pics are by the girls from Chonastock. Always loved the look of the Andorian chick.

Yes, and to be clear, I'm going through my Picasa albums and adding sources, names, tags, etc. At some point in the indeterminate future, when you click these images and go to my Picasa, you'll see more documentation and credits than the average person dreams of.

A good example is this:

If you click that, you'll see that I've tagged it, identified the three people in it, noted the series and episode name, and basically done everything but credit the actors and production staff. I would, but I'm not that anal retentive.

I'm unclear how one can accuse me of stealing art when, as a matter of policy, I'm attempting to credit everyone in sight in an extremely anal-retentive fashion ...

Admittedly, I've not done it yet for this series, but I'll get around to it. I was mostly amusing myself with the Gimp, and it hadn't occurred to me to tag the pics yet.

However, this tagging is a matter of policy for me. After having scanned hundreds of my grandmother's ancient pictures and having no idea who any of the people in it are, I've decided to spare my grandkids the trouble.

All my pics -- any kind -- go to Picasa and get tagged to within an inch of their lives.

Dakota Smith

__________________"No human being has the right — under any circumstances — to initiate force against another human being, nor to threaten or delegate its initiation."

Well. to start with. You can get banned from trekbbs. It's part of the forum rules here to give credit to the original artist.

I just want to be clear about this argument, because I find it highly specious:

Yesterday, I had an itch. I'd seen the picture of the two girls in the photoshoot and realized it could be photoshopped quite nicely -- even by someone totally artistically challenged like myself. So I whipped out the Gimp and amused myself for a couple of hours. I thought the TrekBBS Art forum members might be interested in the results, so I posted it.

I did not credit all the various players rather specifically because Picasa is a far better medium for doing so. Further, by linking to Picasa from the posted pics (as I did), any and all identification and tagging is available to any user who wants to see it.

Is it therefore necessary for me to post the original artists: the DeviantArt models and photographers; the artist who did the Scalos cityscape for Trek Remastered, our own deg3D (whose real name I didn't even know until I searched it so that I can tag it in Picasa); and some nameless photographer who took a picture of a Japanese bullet train?

(Particularly in the case of the bullet train, I'm not even sure if one could determine who the original photographer was. I just Googled "bullet train" and chose the first image with adequate lighting and angle.)

Is it necessary to quote all this information separately every time I post something, particularly when Picasa shows (or is being updated to show -- I have a ton of pics, and most of them are a hell of a lot more important to me than these three) all of this information for anyone who cares to look?

Look, the bottom line is that I was killing some time and thought the people in the forum might be interested. If this is really a problem, then the only way to deal with it is to do such work for myself and never post it where anyone can see.

I can't even email it, for fear that someone might post it publicly without crediting the original artists -- or worse, crediting me as the sole artist.

Is that the intent of those arguing that this couple of hours' amusement constitutes stealing others' work?

Also, I'm flaunting nothing with respect to how easy it is to do what I've done. The fact that it's easy is kind of the point: I can (and may) stop posting such things in public to avoid IP Nazis losing it on me. But that absolutely won't stop me from amusing myself in private.

That's the way the Internet works: millions of individuals using it to do whatever the hell they feel like, regardless of what any other individual may think.

In short, if you post something on the Internet, it becomes fair game because that's how the Internet works. You can make me retreat to the shadows and amuse myself alone, but you can't make me stop amusing myself.

(By the way, I should note that from an Internet perspective, I'm just being a nice guy by even mentioning the original artists. The overwhelming majority of people couldn't care less and would laugh at the suggestion. That's just how non-intuitive the argument is.)

Dakota Smith

__________________"No human being has the right — under any circumstances — to initiate force against another human being, nor to threaten or delegate its initiation."

I am going to guess with your attitude towards the issue, you would be better off not posting anymore of "your" work in this forum then.

Sigh. It's a frakking digital collage. I'm the first person to say so.

I assume that you've looked at my tags and captions and disagree that this is appropriate credit:

(I know, I've not tagged the models. That's because I don't know their names. DeviantArt says they're "chiaki and ona", but I don't know which is which or even if those are real names.)

The argument that "everyone else does it" is fairly childish and (as most parents would tell you) doesn't make it right.

I apologize, as that wasn't the argument I was actually making.

The argument I'm making is that computing equipment is so cheap and these images so public that to ask everyone in the world to not use them is a pointless exercise in futility.

Not sell them, certainly. Not make a profit from them in any way, absolutely. But to just let the images sit there, not even amusing yourself by messing with them? You're asking to go against human nature itself.

Furthermore, the Internet being what it is, there's absolutely no way to stop me if I feel like it. Nyah.

^I agree it's enough credit as the group bills themselves as Chonastock. I do think you should have at least included that in your original post if not on the image as a lot of people (myself included) don't always click through to the original. (or even notice that the image is clickable)

__________________Baby, you and me were never meant to be, just maybe think of me once in a while...

I suppose I could put that information right on the picture, but to be honest that sort of thing tends to annoy me as a viewer. It's one thing to do it with schematics, like crediting Vance's Toolkit. It's another when the picture is purely artistic.

I guess it sort of feels to me like tacking on all kinds of information to the Mona Lisa. It detracts from the artistic value of the portrait to write all over it.

(And no, I'm not comparing the artistic value of this pic with the Mona Lisa.)

That said, the point is well-taken. It's one of the reasons I like JPEGs and their internal comment. I suppose I could put all that info into the internal comment.

It might even be better, as regardless of who distributes the work, the comment probably won't be changed. One look at the comment, and you'd know I didn't do the original work.

(In point of fact, I routinely insert a standard comment in my images. I'm sort of conducting an experiment: how long and how many pictures will it take before Google searches return my pictures based on their JPEG comment?

(Actually, I just checked: while not fantastic, the Jackalope, Sonic Screwdrivers, and yellow avatars with a black circle are all from the JPEG comment rather than the filename.)

I'll see what I can do. To be honest, it's a fair amount of effort for something that, in ten years will probably only be found accidentally with a Google search.

Dakota Smith

__________________"No human being has the right — under any circumstances — to initiate force against another human being, nor to threaten or delegate its initiation."

I wonder if you could make the dome a little closer in color to the other buildings. That's the only thing bugging me.

I'd noticed the same thing. Unfortunately, that kind of manipulation is beyond my meager artistic skills.

Here's a pic to demonstrate what I mean:

This is a publicly-posted pic of libertarian activist Allison Gibbs altered to be an Orion.

It's within my skills to change her skin color to green while leaving her hair, bikini, and background alone. Basically, though, it was a big chunk of skin on which I messed with the color. I'm not entirely thrilled with it, but it's what I can do.

The dome in the pic is so complex that I'm not sure how I would even select the parts that needs to be recolored.

I'll see what I can do. To be honest, it's a fair amount of effort for something that, in ten years will probably only be found accidentally with a Google search.

Well, just keep in mind it's part of the board rules, so not really an option for posting here.

I think I'd need some definitive statement from a mod that I'm in violation of rules by posting the way I have. I link to the pic's Picasa page as a matter of course, and I've now got more identification on those pages than the users here have on their own work.

I think people need to have a certain perspective on this:

I've not failed to credit the original images. Credit is all over their Picasa pages, where they should be.I'm utterly talentless artistically, as are the majority of people in the world. When asked, I'll give credit where credit is due and make no bones about it.

What you're asking those of us artistically challenged to do is manipulate software and insert information into pics. Most people have little idea how to do this.

By suggesting that it's absolutely necessary to do something most people don't know how to do, you drive them away from the BBS -- or they just start lurking.

Now, there's so much really good work in this forum that lurking is fine ... it's just a shame. It'd be fun to see more photoshops, but given the IP-related reaction to this one, I'm unclear why anyone would make the effort.

I mean seriously, I posted a photoshop of a couple of chicks, a background, a shuttlecraft, and a bullet train. I never tried to claim any of them as my own, and indeed bent over backward to give credit where it's due.

In fact, what I've done in the last 24 hours on this one series of three images is considerably more work than most people would consider doing for a totally optional "good time". In fact, requiring us to give this level of credit in a specific format takes the "good time" kind of right out of it.

This was supposed to be a late-night time-killer, not the Spanish Inquisition ...

Dakota Smith

__________________"No human being has the right — under any circumstances — to initiate force against another human being, nor to threaten or delegate its initiation."